


i will return as your lowliest servant (if you will only open the door)

by Hth



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Kissing, Love at First Sight, M/M, Memory Loss, sort of not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:33:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23292505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hth/pseuds/Hth
Summary: A tall, dark stranger.  A kiss.  A case of mistake identity -- or not.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 23
Kudos: 222





	i will return as your lowliest servant (if you will only open the door)

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by @allegria23 on Tumblr: "kiss, a sidewalk, relief"  
> Title from The Magician's Land, but don't hunt down the actual context, it's creepy. I'm upcycling it. I don't know why the title is longer than the story.

There's a guy who's been following Quentin for like – blocks.

So, okay, Quentin knows how weird that sounds, very spy vs spy. Of course he assumed at first that it was a coincidence, that Quentin just happened to be running errands on the same day as this tall stranger with his flapping scarf and his riding boots and his long coat, his unruly curls and his long, angular face that shouldn't _work_ but does work--

The obvious assumption is that Quentin had a weird half-finished sexual awakening in 2012 while binge-watching series 2 of Sherlock, and now he's primed to notice this particular person for – whatever, reasons – and maybe those reasons, and his half-finished sexual awakening, is something he should take up with his therapist.

And maybe he'll still do that – God knows Quentin's dad is paying the guy enough – but. It's not a coincidence. He's definitely following Quentin from store to store, casually less than half a block away for at least an hour now. He's – stalking, is Quentin being stalked?

That seems like such an unlikely project to undertake at two o'clock on a Friday afternoon, you know? Stalking someone. And that's on top of the general unlikeliness of anyone at all having the remotest interest in stalking Quentin, who has absolutely nothing going on in his life that anybody would – even want to be a part of in a normal, human way, let alone in terms of like – crime.

Quentin is taking a gap year before graduate school, which he guesses he plans to do – grad school, that is – because writing essays is kind of the only life skill that Quentin has, so he might as well just try to keep that gig going until he dies. He's hanging around his father's house, submitting himself to just, like, mountains of therapy, because again, why not? He's good at it. He ought to be, by now.

 _I think this guy has been following me for like an hour_ , he texts Julia while he stands in line for coffee and a small-batch vegan granola bar (it's better than it sounds).

She doesn't respond. She always does eventually, but – sometimes it's kind of on the far end of eventually. Julia's been going through some stuff lately; she's been cagey about it, but Quentin can tell. He's trying not to personalize the situation. Not everything is about him. Julia's life, in particular, has always been way less about Quentin than Quentin's life is about her, and he was bitter about that for a long time, but. Therapy, you know.

He finally gets his coffee and his granola bar, and he stands by the glass doors and pretends to read all the flyers for photography shows and indie film series, but really he's checking to see--

Yeah, there's his stalker, lingering right by the nearest crosswalk. He's not looking at Quentin, though; his attention has been drawn by a nearby dog, one of those rescue greyhounds, Quentin thinks. The dog's owner is waiting to cross the street; the dog is leaning his head softly against the stalker's big Russian coat, and the stalker takes a moment to stroke between its ears with a gloved hand before the dog-walker gets his light and pulls his dog into the street behind him.

He looks up then – the stalker, the, the person, the man – and he sees Quentin watching him through the window. It's the first chance Quentin's had to look straight at him, with neither of them pretending to be looking somewhere else.

Quentin should probably pretend to be looking somewhere else. He can't.

It's not just that the man is handsome, because a lot of people are, a lot of people are way more handsome, and that doesn't usually have much affect on Quentin. If anything it usually makes him a little wary, because good-looking men have rarely, in his experience, felt driven to develop much of a personality; Quentin guesses the kind of guys who – really like other guys don't care much about that, but he's in that weird gray zone where sometimes he gets these killer crushes on other guys but he doesn't know if he'd ever-- he doesn't know, he's just definitely not going to touch somebody's dick if they can't even be bothered to read a book, like, _annually_ , you know? He's not really sure what that makes him, so that. Definitely goes on the to-do list, therapeutically speaking.

But that's not – this isn't –

Quentin doesn't have a crush on this person. He can't, they don't even know each other. But he's looking at Quentin like--

Like nobody has ever, ever looked at Quentin in his whole life. His whole face is alive with a kaleidoscope of emotions, happy and shy and nervous and doubtful and mostly – relieved. He looks relieved, like he's been walking around carrying this weight for ages, thinking he might be stuck in a gray, pointless world with no Quentin Coldwater in it, and the weight is finally gone for good.

None of it makes any sense. He has to be confusing Quentin with – somebody. Else, somebody else. Who – matters, who's been alive and done things and made something of all his potential.

It would be – kind of amazing, though. If whoever this is meant – all of – whatever _that_ is for Quentin. It would be, Quentin thinks, kind of – life-changing.

 _This is stupid_ , he tells himself as he pushes the door open. _This isn't a storybook, this isn't a love-at-first-sight thing because that's not a thing._ Not to mention if it was a thing, Quentin would wreck it the minute he opened his mouth, he doesn't even know what he's going to say to this guy. He should say _I'm not whoever you think I am_.

He shouldn't say, _I wish I were whoever you think I am_. But not because it's not true.

It's too late to have a plan, though, because he's standing now in front of this stranger, who's tall and skinny in the way that people design clothes to hang artfully off of, who's wearing soft leather gloves and a gray and pink waistcoat and eye-makeup around eyes that are complex in this green-hazel-bronze way that should have notes and body and an aftertaste like expensive wine. There's definitely not going to be a plan _now_. Quentin's going to be lucky if he can blather out his own name.

The man puts one gloved hand carefully on Quentin's shoulder and touches the other to Quentin's chest. He tilts his head, searching Quentin's face, and Quentin knows he's going to fail this test and he doesn't want to, he wants to pass, he wants to be good enough, _I want to be whoever you came here looking for, I wish I were him and not me, but somehow I always end up me, so sorry in advance, oh my god, how are those your real eyes?_

“Do you remember me?” the man asks, and his voice is richer, lower than Quentin would have guessed, with just a hint of a three-cigarette-breakfast sort of rasp.

And more than anything, Quentin wants to _lie_ , he wants to say, _of course, yes, good to see you again, how've you been, you look great, you want to do something?_ If Quentin were good at people, he might be able to play it off long enough to--

To _what_? To buy enough time to make this beautiful man forget that he's obviously – basically pretty much in love with someone else?

Because he is, right? Whoever he's mistaken Quentin for, he must – he must be in love with that guy. Just based on the way – his face – the way his eyes stroke over Quentin's skin?

“I'm sorry,” Quentin says, and _god_ , he really is. “I don't think I'm – who you think I am.”

Quentin's nobody, he's just this aimless, awkward nerd stuck in arrested development somewhere around his first nervous breakdown, he's notable mainly for what he's failed to learn about the real world, for his refusal to just – do it, to just turn into a fucking adult like everyone else manages somehow to do. He's nobody, he's barely scraped through every coming-of-age milestone, and he still feels like he's perpetually _coming_ of age, and never actually _of age_. He's twenty-two and unemployed and he's never had a really serious relationship and he's not, he's not, he's not whatever it is that this beautiful man thinks is going to – complete him or fix his life or whatever.

He wants to cry. He hates how disappointing the world is, but he's suddenly terrified that – more things are possible than he ever knew, and that means he's so much further behind than he thought he was.

The man smiles at him, warm and knowing. God, he's-- God. “I know who you are, Q,” he says, and Quentin's heart kind of – drops and breaks and – turns into something else. The whole world turns into – something that isn't what Quentin thought it was, and he's terrified and exhilarated. “And I can't tell you how you know me – not here, anyway – but you do know me. My name is Eliot, and – and I'm sorry it took me so long to find you, but it's been a bit dramatic at Brakebills lately--”

“At where?” Quentin says helplessly.

Eliot smiles wider, and he starts to move away, which is kind of – not, like – not going to work for Quentin, so he grabs Eliot's wrist and holds his hand right where it is, against the zipper of Quentin's parka, over the center of his chest.

So instead of moving that hand, Eliot shifts his other hand and wraps his arm around Quentin's shoulders and pulls him closer, and then he leans down and doesn't seem to hear the incredibly embarrassing little noise of _yes-no-yes-holy-shit_ that Quentin makes before Eliot kisses him right there on the sidewalk.

His lips are smooth and dry, but the more Quentin leans up into the kiss, the more obvious the sharp burn of his stubble is, and for a minute he's not sure if he – likes this? It's so different, he feels even more like it's – not for him, not supposed to be him, there's been a mistake--

But then Eliot moves his hand, curls it around the back of Quentin's neck, and his hand is so big that it easily covers so much skin, slipped boldly and intimately behind the curtain of Quentin's hair, and that – that feels like it's for Quentin.

He tries to suck in a quick breath before tilting his head, kissing Eliot more firmly, and kissing Eliot – seems to mean Eliot taking hold of him, handling him, handling all of this, and now Quentin can feel the slow slide of Eliot's tongue, taste something sweet and subtle on the inside of his lips – the understated kind of sweetness of licorice or blackberry or 85% chocolate, the kind of thing that adults like for dessert when they don't like things that are too much like candy.

Quentin's heart vibrates against his chest, thrilled by that idea. Eliot doesn't taste like – doesn't feel like a crush, or an uncomfortable college hookup, and Quentin feels like maybe he should start the counter over at this point – like maybe this is his first _adult_ kiss.

He wants to do so many things for the first time with Eliot. Is it for the first time – would it be? He doesn't know, he doesn't care. Everything is new. The world has never been more new.

When Eliot lets him go, Quentin drops back onto his heels so abruptly that his knees almost buckle, or at least that's what he's going to blame his knees on. Eliot catches him by both elbows and smiles at him, and there's an arrogance to the smile that Quentin thinks he should push back against, but, well. The guy did just _kiss the living fuck_ out of him, so maybe he deserves his minute in the sun.

But Eliot cancels out the smug curl of his smile with the way he visibly quivers as he sucks in a choppy breath. He lifts his hands, skimming up Quentin's upper arms, and strokes his fingers through Quentin's hair, over and behind his ears. “Fuck, it's so good to see you,” he says breathlessly. “Stay close to me, okay? I'll keep you safe until we can get your memories back.”

“Safe?” Quentin says. That sounds – not safe, currently. That's bad? It sounds bad, but he feels so fucking _good_. He thinks he's smiling like an idiot up at Eliot. He doesn't care.

“We'll talk,” Eliot says. “Not here. Will you come with me?”

Quentin is so shocked by the question that he laughs out loud. _Will he go with Eliot?_

He's been waiting his whole life for a door to open, and for the chance to run through it.


End file.
